


lights

by brraveheart



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sun & Moon | Pokemon Sun & Moon Versions
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Implied Relationships, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 13:12:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11231706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brraveheart/pseuds/brraveheart
Summary: "He hugs her and she allows it, for the first time in the year they’ve known each other. He rocks her back and forth and murmurs soothing things in a language she can’t completely understand, though she thinks she can pick out the Alolan word for "love"." It wasn't supposed to end like this.





	lights

**Author's Note:**

> It's technically Hau/Moon, but I wrote this before I actually learned the names of the protagonists, and Selena just sort of stuck for me. God knows if I write more Pokemon, I may not keep that name up, but it's staying for this story.

They catch their pichu at the same time.

He circles back to her home on the outskirts of Hau’oli, insistent that he accompany her back to Iki Town. “You never know,” he tells her, with all the sly confidence of a boy who’s trying too hard to be cool, “ _What’s_ out there. You know?”

But Selena is steadfast and studious, and she’s a pretty good idea of what’s _out there_. She doesn’t tell him about Viridian City, and how _scary_ Viridian Forest could be — _when Champion Leaf almost died trying to wrestle two little kids out of that living thicket_ — but she _smiles_ , smiles a smile he wouldn’t understand because he doesn’t _know_.

_(she still remembers that forest, some days; the sound of beedrill and arceus-knew-what-else, scrambling, desperate and hungry and her, only eight years old, huddled up with her best friend from another life —)_

Selena shakes herself out of the memory and lets Hau drag her into the lush undergrowth of route 1. Her popplio, Miles, leans up to sniff at the tangy salt air, his eyes fairly glowing with excitement.

This is where they meet the pichu — a pair of siblings, from the looks of it. Hau sees them first, naturally, just little tykes, playing by the wild grassy patches leading up to the school.

“The professor taught you how to catch Pokémon, right?” he asks, and she nods, and this is where it begins.

It’s simple stuff, to catch them — they’re little and weak, and Selena reads enough to know the basics of what the professor _didn’t_ tell her — but the look on their faces when they let them out again, the dawning horror of realization, the _knowledge_ that they’d been caught by trainers and — and —

And Selena doesn’t know Hau too well, but she wants to say they’re friends, and hopes he doesn’t mind too badly when she cradles her new pichu — a timid female, one she’ll call _Millie_ — in her arms and says, “Don’t worry, you’ll see each other a lot. I _promise_.”

And Hau looks surprised, but happy, and so do the pair of pichu.

 

They battle in Iki Town, but Selena won’t let Millie battle her brother. She’s not that cruel, and she can tell it makes both of them nervous, maybe especially Hau’s pichu — little Luca.

Selena took out Hau’s litten within the first turn — and Miles had been felled easily by Luca’s thundershocks. But now it’s sibling-to-sibling, a faceoff that she doesn’t want to deal with.

“C’mon,” Hau says, in that surefire way of his, “It’s a battle, so _battle_!” He’s goading them in front of a crowd, as if that’s going to work on Selena. Obviously, he’s as oblivious as he looks.

Selena frowns. _Hau_ might be raring to go, and Selena’s own pride might be twitching in response to it, but neither of the pichu siblings seem too willing to push into _this_ fight. They’re both twiddling their paws before their trainers, looking down, not looking enthused _at all_ , looking everywhere but at each other.

“No,” Selena says, very calmly, when Millie lets out a little whimper and glances up at her as if to ask, _I really don’t have to battle?_ “I won’t. I forfeit the match.”

There’s gasps coming from the crowd around them — a quick glance at Hala’s unreadable face doesn’t help much, either. A part of Selena _really_ hopes she’s not spitting on some ancient Alolan tradition by doing this, but she really can’t find it in her to _care_ when her pokémon is shaking on the center stage like this.

“You…” Hau sputters. “ _What_?”

“You heard me,” Selena says simply, moving forward to scoop up her trembling pichu. “Neither of them want to fight, and I’m not going to try and make them. So, I forfeit.”

There’s a rush of murmuring from around them; somebody whispers, _she can’t do that,_ and yet another mutters angrily: _damn mainlanders, always thinking they can undermine tradition!_

And Selena feels bad, she _does_ , but Millie’s curling up into her chest and cooing at her gratefully, and that’s all she can hope to focus on right now, until Hala claps his big hands together and walks upon the stage.

For a moment she’s fearful, until she sees the softness in Hala’s features — the understanding. “You are far kinder and far _braver_ than I initially gave you credit for, girl,” he says approvingly, with a curt nod. “Most _adults_ wouldn’t take a pokémon’s feelings into consideration, but you did it without hesitation. Even less would do it when placed in an unfamiliar situation such as this, surrounded by strangers and being judged for it.”

Selena’s throat is dry. Hau’s eyes are wide on her own, but eventually he moves, surging forward to pluck up Luca, who is fairly whimpering with relief. Hala smiles at his grandson as he coos apologies at the teary-eyed pichu, who merely sniffles up to him in response — _forgiven_ , he seems to say.

Selena opens her mouth — to say what, she isn’t sure — but she’s cut off by the piercing cry that’s been haunting her daydreams lately. She startles, and Hala’s laugh cuts through the morning air.

“It seems as though our Tapu Koko agrees!”

 

They evolve at the same time, too.

Luca and Millie.

They are on their way to Akala Island when it happens — when they’re on the boat over and Lillie nearly screams at the whitish-blue light that envelopes both pichu, who’d been munching on malasada brought by their trainers.

“Are they —?”

“Oh my arceus!”

“Now, _this_ is a sight, yeah — both of your pichu, evolving at the same time?”

“ _Whoa_.”

A flash, a flicker, and then two pikachu, one with a notch in her tail, cooing and giggling and scurrying around the other.

 

_(and it’s a good life, from thereon in; selena likes to think they’d been some of the best days of millie’s life —_

_they’d been the best of selena’s, definitely)_

And it ends with a shudder and a smile, an accident. A terrible, _terrible_ accident.

_(every day since olivia’s shop in konikoni city, selena’s played with the thunderstone in her hands, touched it, wondered how badly millie wanted to change again — and she thinks of hau, and luca, and how excited they both were, how quiet and reserved millie was, and thinks, and thinks — she won’t want it yet)_

And there are days afterwards, where Selena will wonder if evolving her earlier might’ve saved her — if Millie might’ve been stronger for it, come the end. Hau isn’t there when Selena follows Lillie into the wormhole after Lusamine, but some part of her wishes he was.

Selena was always the strong one for people like Lillie — good people, kind people, _soft people_. She wishes Hau were here now, somehow — an _anchor_. Or _something_.

She wonders if maybe Millie would want Luca here.

Probably.

Neither of them see Lusamine come up after the battle is all said and done — Millie is quite cheerful following Lusamine’s Beware’s defeat, but all that changes in an instant. In the end, Nebby, even in his new form, is far too slow.

All of the air is knocked out of Selena’s lungs as her beloved pikachu is tossed backwards, hand through her heart, the ultra-beast’s ultimate taint staining her lovely yellow fur bloody.

The name _Millie_ is ripped from Selena’s throat.

This isn’t how it was meant to end.

 

_(even now, years later — she will sometimes dream of a pichu living on the outskirts of route one._

_a pichu who moved on after her brother got caught by some lovely human who treated him right. a pichu who never evolved, but lived happily anyway)_

 

Even with Nebby’s speed, Millie is barely breathing by the time they make it back into their proper world. Hapu is there, staring at the scene with wide eyes before moving into action.

“Please,” Selena gasps, and she sounds _so_ unlike herself, “Please save her.”

Hapu looks at her helplessly; Lillie is crying somewhere distant. Selena tries to call charizard on her page rider, dials the number as fast as she can, but by the time she’s got the last digit in, her hands are trembling and Millie is so _very still_.

She screams when somebody tries to take the page rider from her. It’s Guzma, looking so terribly hollow and frightened — and a little angry, when she begins to hit him in the chest and demand he return that to her, that she needs to _save Millie_ , that if she could only —

“The rat’s _dead_ , kid,” Guzma says roughly, and he looks like he’s got tears in his eyes, too. “I know it sucks, honey. I _do_. But she’s dead. It’s a part of life.”

He shoves her down onto the ground, and only gives her back the page rider once she’s all done crying. She cradles Millie’s cooling body in her arms, and distantly, she thinks she can recall Lillie’s arms around _her_ , and Nebby’s new, large form protecting them both.

“I’m sorry Millie,” she pants, harsh, at this little pikachu who’d been at the center of so _many_ adventures, “I’m so sorry.”

 

She makes it to Mt. Lanakila, eventually.

Nebby’s on her team now. It should be comforting, but it’s not — to have something so large and so _powerful_ beside her. It should make her feel safe, but it doesn’t.

Every night she dreams of it. A little yellow body, Lusamine’s wild eyes — and she knows she’ll never forgive that woman for what she did to one of her best friends. Her pokémon won’t forget. Lillie won’t forget, either — and though she’ll insist with vehemence that _she’s still my mother_ , Selena _knows_ the look in her friend’s eye is nothing less than absolute disgust at the monster she’s become.

She hates her for it, too. Somehow, that makes the fact that Lillie’s trying to help her _recover_ all the more palatable. It makes Selena happy, in a sick sort of way.

She’s been avoiding Hau carefully since then — he’s left her phone calls, has tried to lag back to _bump_ into her, but never manages it, and it’s something she’s grateful for.

They meet again on Mt. Lanakila, and she’s no idea what to say to him then. No idea what to say when he corners her in the Pokémon Center and lets little Luca out — _not so little anymore, he’s a raichu with eyes like the sea itself_ — and _arceus help her_ , she _tears up_ because _that’s what Millie might’ve looked like_.

Psyche, her salazzle, hisses protectively at Hau when her trainer whimpers with the pain of it all, but Hau’s face is the picture of concerned comfort as he tries to pull her into his embrace.

And she resists, because she has _always_ resisted. Him and his kindness — it’s always been a foreign thing, this Alolan warmth that is so _different_ from the famed Kantonian coolness. And he lets her, because he knows enough about her that he knows not to hold on too tightly. _Like sand,_ like Hala would say.

“Where’s Millie?” he says quietly after a moment, because he must’ve noticed — must’ve noticed all her pokémon, even the shadow of lunala’s moon ball in her belt — must’ve noticed all of it.

“Dead,” Selena whispers after a moment. “Lusamine killed her.”

And somehow, it’s freeing to say it — not so much when she looks up and sees tears mingling with the cold fury on Hau’s face.

He’s angry.

Not with her, though.

And _this_ — now is when he hugs her and she allows it, for the first time in the year they’ve known each other. He rocks her back and forth and murmurs soothing things in a language she can’t completely understand, though she thinks she can pick out the Alolan word for _love_.

She stays still, and lets him hold her.

And this is how the story goes.

 

_Months later, she’s doing some last-minute work for Kukui on ghost-type moves and normal-type moves and finds herself at the abandoned megamart in Tapu Village. Hau is with her, Luca beside him, a neutral party with useful moves should they be cornered at any point by any member of the playful — if noticeably deadly — gastly line that’s been known to live here._

_This is where she meets the mimikyu._

_She’s a gentle little thing, with a drawn-on-face and a timid disposition, and suddenly — Selena wishes she weren’t — she’s taken back to a time many weeks ago. Another little love, a lifetime ago._

_“Millie?” she asks, quietly, because there’s this old Alolan myth about reincarnation she’s heard from Hau before. The mimikyu shifts, looking a little hopeful. She’s young, Selena thinks, but in all it’s hard to tell — but she’s so little, so it makes sense._

_“Mikyu?” the sound she makes is halfway between a growl and a scratch, deep in her throat._

_And Selena’s not sure if she wants to be that fanciful — to believe this is her little pikachu, reincarnated somehow — but the mimikyu is so very gentle, and so very lonely, and she can’t bear to leave her alone in such a dreary place._

_“Would you like to come with me?” Selena asks softly; the mimikyu jumps up, hardly daring to believe her words. Black tendrils for hands come up to brush away stray strands of Selena’s hair. She’s smiling sadly as she picks the little ghost type up._

_Somewhere in the distance, she thinks she can hear the giggle-cry of a pikachu._


End file.
